On the fourth of January Dion and about nine hundred other men were sworn in at the Guildhall; on January the seventeenth, eight hundred of them, including Dion, were presented with the Freedom of the City of London; on the nineteenth they were equipped and attended a farewell service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, after which they were entertained at supper, some at Gray’s Inn and some at Lincoln’s Inn; on the twentieth they entrained for Southampton, from which port they sailed in the afternoon for South Africa. Dion was on board of the “Ariosto.”

Strangely, perhaps, he was almost glad when the ship cast off and the shores of England faded and presently were lost beyond the horizon line. He was alone now with his duty. Life was suddenly simplified. It was better so. In the last days he had often felt confused, beset, had often felt that he was struggling in a sea of complications which threatened to overwhelm him. There had been too much to do and there had been too much to endure; he had been obliged to be practical when he was feeling intensely emotional. The effort to dominate and to conceal his emotion had sometimes almost exhausted him in the midst of all he had had to do. He had come to the knowledge of the fact that it is the work of the spirit which leaves the whole man tired. He was weary, not from hard energies connected with his new profession, not from getting up at dawn, marching through dense crowds of cheering countrymen, traveling, settling in on shipboard, but from farewells. He looked back now upon a sort of panorama of farewells, of partings from his mother, his uncle, Bruce Evelin, Guy, Beatrice, Robin, Rosamund.

Quite possibly all these human companions had vanished out of his life for ever. It was a tremendous thought, upon which he was resolved not to dwell lest his courage and his energies might be weakened.

Through good-bys a man may come to knowledge, and Dion had, in these last few days, gone down to the bedrock of knowledge concerning some of those few who were intimately in his life—knowledge of them and also of himself. Nobody had traveled to Southampton to see him off. He had a very English horror of scenes, and had said all his good-bys in private. With Bruce Evelin he had had a long talk; they had spoken frankly together about the future of Rosamund and Robin in the event of his not coming back. Dion had expressed his views on the bringing up of the boy, and, in doing so had let Bruce Evelin into secrets of Greece. The father did not expect, perhaps did not even desire, that the little son should develop into a paragon, but he did desire for Rosamund’s child the strong soul in the strong body, and the soft heart that was not a softy’s heart.

In that conversation Bruce Evelin had learnt a great deal about Dion. They had spoken of Rosamund, perhaps more intimately than they had ever spoken before, and Dion had said, “I’m bothering so much about Robin partly because her life is bound up with Robin’s.”

“Several lives are bound up with that little chap’s,” Bruce Evelin had said.

And a sudden sense of loneliness had come upon Dion. But he had only made some apparently casual remark to the effect that he knew Bruce Evelin would do his best to see that Robin came to no harm. No absurd and unnecessary promises had been exchanged between the old and the young man. Their talk had been British, often seemingly casual, and nearly always touched with deep feeling. It had not opened to Dion new vistas of Bruce Evelin. For a long time Dion had felt that he knew Bruce Evelin. But it had given him a definite revelation of the strong faithfulness, the tenacity of faithfulness in friendship, which was perhaps the keynote of Bruce Evelin’s character.

The parting from Guy had been less eventful. Nevertheless it had helped to get rid of certain faint misunderstandings which neither of the friends had ever acknowledged. Since the Mrs. Clarke episode Dion had been aware that Guy’s feeling towards him had slightly changed. They were such old and tried friends that they would always care for each other, but Guy could not help resenting Rosamund’s treatment of Mrs. Clarke, could not help considering Dion’s acquiescence in it a sign of weakness. These feelings, unexpressed, but understood by Dion, had set up a slight barrier between the two young men; it had fallen when they said good-by. Mrs. Clarke had been forgotten then by Guy, who had only remembered the gifts of war, and that possibly this was his final sight of old Dion. All their common memories had been with them when the last hand-clasp was given, and perhaps only when their hands fell apart had they thoroughly tested at last the strength of the link between them. They were friends for life without knowing exactly why. Thousands of Englishmen were in the same case.

Dion had gone to De Lorne Mansions to bid good-by to Beattie, and with her, too, he had talked about Robin. Beattie had known when Dion was coming, and had taken care to be alone. Always quiet, she had seemed to Dion quieter even than usual in that final hour by the fire, almost singularly timid and repressed. There had even been moments when she had seemed to him cold. But the coldness—if really there had been any—had been in her manner, perhaps in her voice, but had been absent from her face. They had sat in the firelight, which Beattie was always fond of, and Dion had not been able to see her quite clearly. If the electric light had been turned on she might have told him more; but she surely would not have told him of the quiet indifference which manner and voice and even inexpressive attitude had seemed to be endeavoring to convey to him. For Beattie’s only half-revealed face had looked eloquent in the firelight, eloquent of a sympathy and even of a sorrow she had said very little about. Whenever Dion had begun to feel slightly chilled he had looked at her, and the face in the firelight had assured him. “Beattie does care,” he had thought; and he had realized how much he wanted Beattie to care, how he had come to depend upon Beattie’s sisterly affection and gentle but deep interest in all the course of his life.

Quickly, too quickly, the moment had come for him to say the last word to Beattie, and suddenly he had felt shy. It had seemed to him that something in Beattie—he could not have said what—had brought about this unusual sensation in him. He had got up abruptly with a “Well, I suppose I must be off now!” and had thrust out his hand. He had felt that his manner and action were almost awkward and hard. Beattie had got up too in a way that looked listless.

“Are you well, Beattie?” he had asked.

“Quite well.”

“Perhaps you are tired?”

“No.”

“I fancied—well, good-by, Beattie.”

“Good-by, Dion.”

That had been all. At the door he had looked round, and had seen Beattie standing with her back to him and her face to the firelight, stooping slightly, and he had felt a strong impulse to go to her again, and to—he hardly knew what—to say good-by again, perhaps, in a different, more affectionate or more tender way. But he had not done it. Instead he had gone out and had shut the door behind him very quietly. It was odd that Beattie had not even looked after him. Surely people generally did that when a friend was going away, perhaps for ever. But Beattie was different from other people, and somehow he was quite sure she cared.

The three last good-bys had been said to his mother, Robin and Rosamund, in Queen Anne’s Mansions and Little Market Street. He had stayed with his mother for nearly two hours. She had a very bad cold, unbecoming, complicated with fits of sneezing, a cold in the “three handkerchiefs an hour” stage. And this commonplace malady had made him feel very tender about her, and oddly pitiful about all humanity, including, of course, himself. While they talked he had thought several times, “It’s hard to see mother in such a state when perhaps I shall never see her again. I don’t want to remember her with a cold.” And the thought, “I shan’t be here to see her get well,” had pained him acutely.

“I’m looking and feeling glazed, dee-ar,” had been her greeting to him. “My nose is shiny and my mind is woolly. I don’t think you ought to kiss me or talk to me.”

And then he had kissed her, and they had talked, intimately, sincerely. In those last hours mercifully Dion had not felt shy with his mother. But perhaps this was because she was never shy, not even in tenderness or in sorrow. She was not afraid of herself. They had even been able to discuss the possibility of his being killed in the war, and Mrs. Leith had been quite simple about it, laying aside all her usual elaboration of manner.

“The saddest result of such an honorable and noble end would be the loss to Robin, I think,” she had said.

“To Robin? But he’s got such a mother!”

“Do you think he doesn’t need, won’t need much more later on, the father he’s got? Dion, my son, humility is a virtue, no doubt, but I don’t believe in excess even in the practice of virtue, and sometimes I think you do.”

“I didn’t know it.”

“This going to the war is a splendid thing for you. I wouldn’t have you out of it even though——”

Here she had been overcome by a tremendous fit of sneezing from which she had emerged with the smiling remark:

“I’m not permitted to improve the occasion.”

“I believe I know what you mean. Perhaps you’re right, mother. You’re cleverer than I am. Still I can’t help seeing that Robin’s got a mother such as few children have. Look round at all the mothers you know in London!”

“Yes. Rosamund was created to be a mother. But just to-day I want to look at Robin’s father.”

And so they had talked of him.

That talk had done Dion good. It had set his face towards a shining future. If he came back from the war he now felt, through the feeling of his mother, that he would surely come back tempered, tried, better fitted to Robin’s uses, more worthy of any woman’s gift of herself. Without preaching, even without being remarkably definite, his mother had made him see in this distant war a great opportunity, not to win a V.C. or any splashing honor that would raise him up in the eyes of the world, but to reach out and grip hold of his own best possibilities. Had his mother done even more than this? Had she set before him some other goal which the war might enable him to gain if he had not already gained it? Had she been very subtle when seeming to be very direct? Even when she held him in her arms—despite the cold!—and gave him the final kiss and blessing, he was not sure. If it had been done it had been done with extraordinary delicacy, with the marvelous cunning of clever love which knows how to avoid all the pitfalls. And it had been done, too, with the marvelous unselfishness of which, perhaps, only the highest type of mother-love is capable.

After he had left his mother, and was just going out of the flat, Dion had heard through the half-open door a sound, a ridiculous sound, which had made him love her terribly, and with the sudden yearning which is the keenest pain of the heart because it defines all the human limitations: she was sneezing again violently. As he shut the front door, “If she were to die while I’m away, and I were to come back!” had stabbed his mind. Outside in the court he had gazed up at the towering rows of lighted windows and had said another good-by out there.

Shutting his eyes for a moment as the “Ariosto” plowed her way onwards through a rather malignant sea, Dion saw again those rows of lighted windows, and he wondered, almost as earnestly as a child wonders, whether his mother’s cold was better. What he had done, volunteering for active service and joining the C.I.V. battalion, had made him feel simpler than usual; but he did not know it, did not look on at his own simplicity.

And then, last of all, had come the parting from Robin and Rosamund.

Rosamund and Dion had agreed not to make very much of his departure to Robin. Father was going way for a time, going over the sea picturesquely, with a lot of friends, all men, all happy to be together and to see wonderful things in a country quite different from England. Some day, when Robin was a big as his father, perhaps he, too, would make such a voyage with his friends. Robin had been deeply interested, and had shown his usual ardor in comment and—this was more embarrassing—in research. He had wanted to know a great deal about his father’s intentions and the intentions of father’s numerous male friends. What were they going to do when they arrived in the extremely odd country which had taken it into its head to be different from England? How many male friends was father taking with him? Why hadn’t they all been to “see us?” Was Uncle Guy one of them? Was Mr. Thrush going too? Why wasn’t Mr. Thrush going? If he was too old to go was Uncle Guy too old? Did Mr. Thrush want to go? Was he disappointed at father’s not being able to take him? Was it all a holiday for father? Would mummy have liked to go? No lies had been told to Robin, but some of the information he had sought had been withheld. Dion had made skilful use of Mr. Thrush when matters had become difficult, when Robin had nearly driven him into a corner. The ex-chemist, though seldom seen, loomed large in Robin’s world, on account of his impressive coloring and ancient respectabilities. Robin regarded him with awful admiration, and looked forward to growing like him in some far distant future. Dion had frequently ridden off from difficult questions on Mr. Thrush. Even in the final interview between father and son Mr. Thrush had been much discussed.

The final interview had taken place in the nursery among Aunt Beattie’s bricks, by which Robin was still obsessed. Dion had sat on the floor and built towers with his boy, and had wondered, as he handled the bricks in the shining of the nursery fire, whether he would come back to help Robin with his building later on. He was going out to build, for England and for himself, perhaps for Robin and Rosamund, too. Would he be allowed to see the fruits of his labors?

The towers of bricks had grown high, and with it Dion had built up another tower, unknown to Robin, a tower of hopes for the child. So much ardor in so tiny a frame! It was a revelation of the wonder of life. What a marvel to have helped to create that life and what a responsibility. And he was going away to destroy life, if possible. The grotesqueness of war had come upon him then, as he had built up the tower with Robin. And he had longed for a released world in which his boy might be allowed to walk as a man. The simplicity of Robin, his complete trustfulness, his eager appreciation of human nature, his constant reaching out after kindness without fear of being denied, seemed to imply a world other than the world which must keep on letting blood in order to get along. Robin, and all the other Robins, female and male, revealed war in its true light. Terrible children whose unconscious comment on life bites deep like an acid! Terrible Robin in that last hour with the bricks!

When the tower had become a marvel such as had been seen in no nursery before, Dion had suggested letting it be. Another brick and it must surely fall. The moment was at hand when he must see the last of Robin. He had had a furtive but strong desire to see the tower he and his son had built still standing slenderly erect when he went out of the nursery. Just then he had been the man who seeks a good omen. Robin had agreed with his suggestion after a long moment of rapt contemplation of the tower.

“I wish Mr. Thrush could see it,” he had observed, laying down the brick he had taken up to add to the tower just before his father had spoken. “He would be pleased.”

The words had been lifted out on a sigh, the sigh of the wonder-worker who had achieved his mission. And then they had talked of Mr. Thrush, sitting carefully, almost motionless, beside the tower, and speaking softly “for fear.” The firelight had danced upon the yellow bricks and upon the cream-colored nursery walls, filtering through the high nursery “guard” which protected Robin from annihilation by fire, and the whisper, whisper of their voices had only emphasized the quiet. And, with every moment that went by, the lit-up tower had seemed more like a symbol to Dion. Then at last the cuckoo-clock had chimed and the wooden bird, with trembling tail, had made its jerky obeisance.

“Cuckoo!”

Dion had put his arm round the little figure in the green jersey and the tiny knickerbockers, and had whispered, still governed by the tower:

“I must go now, Robin.”

“Good-by, Fa,” Robin had whispered back, with his eyes on the tower.

With a very careful movement he had lifted his face to be kissed, and on his soft lips Dion had felt a certain remoteness. Did the tower stand between him and his little son as he said good-by to Robin?

Just as he had reluctantly let Robin go and, with his legs crossed, had been about to perform the feat of getting up without touching the floor with his hands, and without shaking the bricks in their places,—moved to this trifling bodily feat by the desire to confront his emotion with an adversary,—the door behind him had been opened. Already in movement he had instinctively half-turned round. Something had happened,—he never knew exactly what,—something had escaped from his physical control because his mind had abruptly been deflected from its task of vigilance; there had been a crash and a cry of “Oh, Fa!” from Robin, and he had met Rosamund’s eyes as the tower toppled down in ruin. Not so much as one brick had been left upon another.

Robin had been greatly distressed. Tears had come into his eyes, and for a moment he had looked reproachfully at his father. Then, almost immediately, something chivalrous had spoken within him, admonishing him, and he had managed a smile.

“It’ll be higher next time, Fa, won’t it?” he had murmured, still evidently fighting a keen disappointment.

And Dion had caught him up, given him a hug, whispered “My boy!” to him, put him down and gone straight out of the room with Rosamund, who had not spoken a word.

And that had been the last of Robin for his father.

In the evening, when Robin was asleep, Dion had said good-by to Rosamund. The catastrophe of the tower of bricks had haunted his mind. As he had chosen to make of the tower an omen, in its destruction he had found a presage of evil which depressed him, which even woke in him ugly fears of the future. He had had a great deal out of life, not all he had wanted, but still a great deal. Perhaps he was not going to have much more. He had not spoken of his fears to Rosamund, but had been resolutely cheerful with her in their last conversation. Neither of them had mentioned the possibility of his not coming back. They had talked of what probably lay before him in South Africa, and of Robin, and presently Rosamund had said:

“I want to make a suggestion. Will you promise to tell me if you dislike it?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Would you mind if I succeeded in letting this house and went into the country with Robin to wait for your coming back?”

“Letting it furnished, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But won’t you be dull in the country, away from mother, and Beattie, and godfather, and all our friends?”

“I could never be dull with Robin and nature, never, and I wouldn’t go very far from London. I thought of something near Welsley.”

“So that you could go in to Cathedral service when ‘The Wilderness’ was sung!”

He had smiled as he had said it, but his own reference to Rosamund’s once-spoken-of love of the wilderness had, in a flash, brought the hill of Drouva before him, and he had faced man’s tragedy—remembered joys of the past in a shadowed present.

“Go into the country, Rose. I only want you to be happy, but”—he had hesitated, and then had added, almost in spite of himself—“but not too happy.”

Not too happy! That really was the great fear at his heart now that he was voyaging towards South Africa, that Rosamund would be too happy without him. He no longer deceived himself. This drastic change in his life had either taught him to face realities, or simply prevented him from being able to do anything else. He told himself the truth, and it was this, that Rosamund did not love him at all as he loved her. She was fond of him, she trusted him, she got on excellently with him, she believed in him, she even admired him for having been able to live as he had lived before their marriage, but she did not passionately love him. He might have been tempted to think that, with all her fine, even splendid, qualities, she was deprived of the power of loving intensely if he had not seen her with Robin, if he had not once spoken with her about her mother.

If he were killed in South Africa would Rosamund be angry at his death? That was her greatest tribute, anger, directed surely not against any human being, but against the God Whom she loved and Who, so she believed, ruled the world and directed the ways of men. Once Rosamund had said that she knew it was possible for human beings to hurt God. She had doubtless spoken out of the depths of her personal experience. She had felt sure that by her anger at the death of her mother she had hurt God. Such a conviction showed how she thought of God, in what a closeness of relation with God she felt herself to be. Dion knew now that she had loved her mother, that she loved Robin, as she did not love him. If he were to die she would be very sorry, but she would not be very angry. No, she would be able to breathe out a “farewell!” simply, with a resignation comparable to that of the Greeks on those tombs which she loved, and then—she would concentrate on Robin.

If he, Dion, were to be shot, and had time for a thought before dying, he knew what his thought would be: that the Boer’s bullet had only hit a man, not, like so many bullets fired in war, a man and a woman. And that thought would add an exquisite bitterness to the normal bitterness of death.

So Dion, on the “Ariosto,” voyaged towards South Africa, companioned by new and definite knowledge—new at any rate in the light and on the surface, definite because in the very big moments of life truth becomes as definite as the bayonet piercing to the man who is pierced.

His comrades were a mixed lot, mostly quite young. The average age was about twenty-five. Among them were barristers, law students, dentists, bank clerks, clerks, men of the Civil Service, architects, auctioneers, engineers, schoolmasters, builders, plumbers, jewelers, tailors, Stock Exchange men, etc., etc. There were representatives of more than a hundred and fifty trades, and adherents to nine religions, among the men of the C.I.V. Their free patriotism welded them together, the thing they had all spontaneously done abolished differences between Baptists and Jews, Methodists and Unitarians, Catholics and Protestants. The perfumery manager and the marine engineer comprehended each other’s language; the dentist and the insurance broker “hit it off together” at first sight; printers and plumbers, pawnbrokers and solicitors, varnish testers and hop factors—they were all friendly and all cheerful together. Each one of them had done a thing which all the rest secretly admired. Respect is a good cement, and can stand a lot of testing. In his comrades Dion was not disappointed. Among them were a few acquaintances, men whom he had met in the City, but there was only one man whom he could count as a friend, a barrister named Worthington, a bachelor, who belonged to the Greville Club, and who was an intimate of Guy Daventry’s. Worthington knew Daventry much better than he knew Dion, but both Dion and he were glad to be together and to exchange impressions in the new life which they had entered so abruptly, moved by a common impulse. Worthington was a dark, sallow, narrow-faced man, wiry, with an eager intellect, fearless and energetic, one of the most cheerful men of the battalion. His company braced Dion.

The second day at sea was disagreeable; the ship rolled considerably, and many officers and men were sea-sick. Dion was well, but Worthington was prostrated, and did not show on deck. Towards evening Dion went down to have a look at him, and found him in his bunk, lead-colored, with pinched features, but still cheerful and able to laugh at his own misery. They had a small “jaw” together about people and things at home, and in the course of it Worthington mentioned Mrs. Clarke, whom he had several times met at De Lorne Gardens.

“You know she’s back in London?” he said. “The winter’s almost impossible at Constantinople because of the winds from the Black Sea.”

“Yes, I heard she was in London, but I haven’t seen her this winter.”

“I half thought—only half—she’d send me a wire to wish me good luck when we embarked,” said Worthington, shifting uneasily in his bunk, and twisting his white lips. “But she didn’t. She’s a fascinating woman. I should have liked to have had a wire from her.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Dion.

“What is it?”

“I’ve just remembered I got some telegrams when we were going off. I read one, from my wife, and stuffed the others away. There was such a lot to do and think of. I believe they’re here.”

He thrust a hand into one of his pockets and brought out four telegrams, one, Rosamund’s, open, the rest unopened. Worthington lay staring at him and them, glad perhaps to be turned for a moment from self-contemplation by any incident, however trifling.

“I’ll bet I know whom they’re from,” said Dion. “One’s from old Guy, one’s from Bruce Evelin, and one’s from——” He paused, fingering the telegrams.

“Eh?” said Worthington, still screwing his lips about.

“Perhaps from Beattie, my sister-in-law, unless she and Guy have clubbed together. Well, let’s see.”

He tore open the first telegram.

“May you have good luck and come back safe and soon.—BEATTIE—GUY.”

He opened the second. It was from Bruce Evelin.

“May you be a happy warrior.—BRUCE EVELIN.”

Dion read it more than once, and his lips quivered for a second. He shot a glance at Worthington, and said, rather bruskly:

“Beatrice and Guy Daventry and Bruce Evelin!”

Worthington gave a little faint nod in the direction of the telegram that was still unopened.

“Your mater!”

“No; she wrote to me. She hates telegrams, says they’re public property. I wonder who it is.”

He pushed a forefinger under the envelope, tore it and pulled out the telegram.

“The forgotten do not always forget. May Allah have you and all brave men in His hand.—CYNTHIA CLARKE.”

Dion felt Worthington’s observant eyes upon him, looked up and met them as the “Ariosto” rolled and creaked in the heavy gray wash of the sea.

“Funny!” he jerked out.

Worthington lifted inquiring eyebrows but evidently hesitated to speak just then.

“It’s from Mrs. Clarke.”

“Beastly of her!” tipped out Worthington. “What—she say?”

“Just wishes me well.”

And Dion stuck the telegram back into the flimsy envelope.

When he looked at it again that night he thought the woman from Stamboul was a very forgiving woman. Almost he wished that she were less forgiving. She made him now, she had made him in days gone by, feel as if he had behaved to her almost badly, like a bit of a brute. Of course that wasn’t true. If he hadn’t been married, no doubt they might have been good friends. As things were, friendship between them was impossible. He did not long for friendship with Mrs. Clarke. His life was full. There was no room in it for her. But he slightly regretted that he had met her, and he regretted more that she had wished to know Rosamund and him better than Rosamund had wished. He kept her telegram, with the rest of the telegrams he had received on his departure; now and then he looked at it, and wondered whether its wording was not the least bit indelicate. It would surely have been wiser if Mrs. Clarke had omitted the opening six words. They conveyed a reproach; they conveyed, too, a curious suggestion of will power, of quiet persistence. When he read them Dion seemed to feel the touch—or the grip—of Stamboul, listless apparently, yet not easily to be evaded or got rid of.

That telegram caused him to wonder whether he had made a really strong impression upon Mrs. Clarke, such as he had not suspected till now, whether she had not, perhaps, liked him a good deal more than she liked most people. “May Allah have you and all brave men in His hand.” Worthington would have been glad to have had that message. Dion had discovered that Worthington was half in love with Mrs. Clarke. He chaffed Dion about Mrs. Clarke’s telegram with a rather persistent gaiety which did not hide a faint, semi-humorous jealousy. One day he even said, “To him that hath shall be given. It’s so like a woman to sent her word of encouragement to the man who’s got a wife to encourage him, and to leave the poor beggar who’s got no one out in the cold. It’s a cruel world, and three-quarters of the cruelty in it is the production of women.” He spoke with a smile, and the argument which followed was not serious. They laughed and bantered each other, but Dion understood that Worthington really envied him because Mrs. Clarke had thought of him at the moment of departure. Perhaps he had been rather stupid in letting Worthington know about her telegram. But Worthington had been watching him; he had had the feeling that Worthington had guessed whom the telegram was from. The matter was of no importance. If Mrs. Clarke had cared for him, or if he had cared for her, he would have kept her message secret; as they were merely acquaintances who no longer met each other, her good wishes from a distance meant very little, merely a kindly thought, for which he was grateful and about which no mystery need be made.

Of course he must write a letter of thanks to Mrs. Clarke.

One day, after he had written to Rosamund, to Robin, to his mother, to Beattie and to Bruce Evelin, Mrs. Clarke’s turn came. His letter to her was short and cheery, but he was slow in writing it. There was a noise of men, a turmoil of activity all about him. In the midst of it he heard a husky, very individual voice, he saw a pair of wide-open distressed eyes looking directly at him. And an odd conviction came to him that life would bring Mrs. Clarke and him together again. Then he would come back from South Africa? He had no premonition about that. What he felt as he wrote his letter was simply that somehow, somewhere, Mrs. Clarke and he would get to know each other better than they knew each other now. Kismet! In the vast Turkish cemeteries there were moldering bodies innumerable. Why did he think of them whenever he thought of Mrs. Clarke? No doubt because she lived in Constantinople, because much of her life was passed in the shadow of the towering cypresses. He had thought of her as a cypress. Did she keep watch over bodies of the dead?

A bugle rang out. He put his letter into the envelope and hastily scribbled the address. Mrs. Clarke was again at Claridge’s.

Every man who loves very deeply wishes to conquer the woman he loves, to conquer the heart of her and to have it as his possession. Dion had left England knowing that he had won Rosamund but had never conquered her. This South African campaign had come upon him like a great blow delivered with intention; a blow which does not stun a man but which wakes the whole man up. If this war had not broken out his life would have gone on as before, harmoniously, comfortably, with the daily work, and the daily exercise, and the daily intercourse with wife and child and friends. And would he ever have absolutely known what he knew now, what—he was certain of it!—his mother knew, what perhaps Beattie and even Bruce Evelin knew?

He had surely failed in a great enterprise, but he was resolved to succeed if long enough life were given to him. He was now awake and walked in full knowledge. Surely, Rosamund being what she was, the issue lay with himself. If God had stood between them that must be because he, Dion, was not yet worthy of the full happiness which was his greatest earthly desire. Dion was certain that God did not stand between Rosamund and Robin.

He had dreams of returning to England a different, or perhaps a developed, man. The perfect lovers ought to stand together on the same level. Rosamund and he had never done that yet. He resolved to gain in South Africa, to get a grip on his best possibilities, to go back to England, if he ever went back, a bigger soul, freer, more competent, more generous, more fearless. He could never be a mystic. He did not want to be that. But surely he could learn in this interval of separation which, like a river, divided his life from Rosamund’s, to match her mysticism with something which would be able to call it out of its mysterious understanding. Instead of retreating to God alone she might then, perhaps, take him with her; instead of praying over him she might pray with him. If, after he returned from South Africa, Rosamund were ever again to be deliberately good with him, making such an effort as she had made on that horrible evening in Little Market Street when he had told her he was going on active service, he felt that he simply couldn’t bear it.

He put firmly aside the natural longings for home which often assailed him, and threw himself heart and soul into his new duties. Already he felt happier, for he was “out” to draw from the present, from the whole of it, all the building material it contained, and was resolute to use all that material in the construction of a palace, a future based on marble, strong, simple, noble, a Parthenon of the future. Only the weak man looks to omens, is governed in his mind, and so in his actions, by them. That which he had not known how to win in an easy life he must learn to win in a life that was hard. This war he would take as a gift to him, something to be used finely. If he fell in it still he would have had his gift, the chance to realize some of his latent and best possibilities. He swept out of his mind an old thought, the creeping surmise that perhaps Rosamund had given him all she had to give in lover’s love, that she knew how to love as child and as mother, but that she was incapable of being a great lover in man’s sense of the term when he applies it to woman.

Madeira was passed on January the twenty-fifth, and the men, staring across the sea, saw its lofty hills rising dreamily out of the haze, watchers of those who would not stop, who had no time for any eating of the lotus. Heat came upon the ship, and there were some who pretended that they heard sounds, and smelled perfumes wafted, like messages, from the hidden shores on which probably they would never land. Every one was kept busy, after a sail bath, with drilling, musketry instruction, physical drill, cleaning of accouterments, a dozen things which made the hours go quickly in a buzz of human activities. Some of the men, Dion among them, were trying to learn Dutch under an instructor who knew the mysteries. A call came for volunteers for inoculation, and both Dion and Worthington answered it, with between forty and fifty other men. The prick of the needle was like the touch of a spark; soon after came a mystery of general wretchedness, followed by pains in the loins, a rise of temperature and extreme, in Dion’s case even intense, weakness. He lay in his bunk trying to play the detective on himself, to stand outside of his body, saying to himself, “This is I, and I am quite unaffected by my bodily condition.” For what seemed to him a long time he was fairly successful in his effort; then the body began to show definitely the power of its weakness upon the Ego, to asset itself by feebleness. His will became like an invalid who is fretful upon the pillows. Soon his strong resolutions, cherished and never to be parted from till out of them the deeds had blossomed, lost blood and fell upon the evil day of anemia. He had a sensation of going out. When the midnight came he could not sleep, and with it came a thought feeble but persistent: “If she loves me it’s because I’ve given her Robin.” And in the creaking darkness, encompassed by the restlessness of the sea, again and again he repeated to himself the words—“it’s because I’ve given her Robin.” That was the plain truth. If he was loved, he was loved because of something he had done, not because of something that he was. Towards dawn he felt so weak that his hold on life seemed relaxing, and at last he almost wished to let it go. He understood why dying people do not usually fear death.

Three days later he was quite well and at work, but the memory of his illness stayed with him all through the South African campaign. Often at night he returned to that night on shipboard, and said to himself, “The doctor’s needle helped me to think clearly.”

The voyage slipped away with the unnoticed swiftness that is the child of monotony. The Southern Cross shone above the ship. When the great heat set in the men were allowed to sleep on deck, and Dion lay all night long under the wheeling stars, and often thought of the stars above Drouva, and heard Rosamund’s voice saying, “I can see the Pleiades.”

The ship crossed the line. Early in February the moon began to show a benign face to the crowd of men. One night there was a concert which was followed by boxing. Dion boxed and won his bout easily on points.

This little success had upon him a bracing effect, and gave him a certain prestige among his comrades. He did well also at revolver and musketry practice—better than many men who, though good enough shots at Bisley, found sectional practice with the service rifle a difficult job, were adepts at missing a mark with the revolver, and knew nothing of fire discipline. Because he had set an aim before him on which he knew that his future happiness depended, he was able to put his whole heart into everything he did. In the simplest duty he saw a means to an end which he desired intensely. Everything that lay to hand in the life of the soldier was building material which he must use to the best advantage. He knew fully, for the first time, the joy of work.

On a day in the middle of February the “Ariosto” passed the mail-boat from the Cape bound for England, sighted Table Mountain, and came to anchor between Robben Island and the docks. On the following morning the men of the C.I.V. felt the earth with eager feet as they marched to Green Point Camp.